[SOLVED] Help with RAID PCI card and SAS drive setup ?

Titanion

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I bought two 3TB HDDs a while back, but because I was stupid and not paying attention, they were SAS instead of SATA.

Seagate
Constellation ES.2
ST33000650SS

So last spring I bought a PCI card, Adaptec rohs asr 5405z 512mb. It came with a battery. I also bought the cables I will need.

This is all new to me. I plugged the card in and it booted to the card, and I had no idea what to do there. I pulled the card out and forgot about it over the summer. But my 2TB SATA storage drive is filling up, so I want to use these two 3TB drives.

What do I do inside this RAID bios? I just want to use these SAS drives for extra storage. Will I be able to get this set up where it boots into Windows and I can see the SAS drives the same way I see my others?

Any advice?

Thanks
 
Solution
I need Windows 10 for sure. Does not supported mean it will not work at all? Any suggestions, then, for a reasonably priced card that will work with Windows 10? Thanks
I've used the Adaptec 6805 with 8 3TB drives from an old server on my latest W10 build for a few months. Despite compatibility, there is one issue -- upon a restart I had to select the latest driver each time. For some reason Windows 10 liked an earlier driver that didn't work.

I don't restart very often so it wasn't a huge deal, going into device manager and selecting update driver and then directing it to the drivers. This may have just been my issue, but it could be more common, I only used it on that one W10 build before giving the array to my brother...

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
Windows 7?

That card is not supported in Windows 10. But in W7 no problem.

I assume that you have one mini-SAS x4 (SFF-8087) to 4 SAS port cable. You need to attach the two drives and each of the 4 fan cables will have a Molex power connector that you need to attach on any that are connected to drives.

Power down and uninstall the card. Now power up and load the May 2012 driver from HERE.

Then insert the card and power back up again, stop the card in its card bios setup -- usually Ctrl-A (but it will say) then get the manual for reference. You will want to select JBOD and not a RAID setting (you may someday want to use RAID 5 but for now to use all the drives you will set it to just use all the drives independently -- JBOD).

Then once the drives are set up in the card bios you will be able to see them in disk management and format NTFS.

You can use the GUI management window in W7, if so install the Adaptec Storage Manager Ver. 7.31.18856 for 64-bit Windows from HERE, 4th one down in the list. Just install it like a program. The only downside is that you may need to password protect your machine because the card will want a password to run the manager and that is the one it uses.
 

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
I need Windows 10 for sure. Does not supported mean it will not work at all? Any suggestions, then, for a reasonably priced card that will work with Windows 10? Thanks
I've used the Adaptec 6805 with 8 3TB drives from an old server on my latest W10 build for a few months. Despite compatibility, there is one issue -- upon a restart I had to select the latest driver each time. For some reason Windows 10 liked an earlier driver that didn't work.

I don't restart very often so it wasn't a huge deal, going into device manager and selecting update driver and then directing it to the drivers. This may have just been my issue, but it could be more common, I only used it on that one W10 build before giving the array to my brother since it was surplus for me. I have two much larger arrays using Adaptec 8805 adapters but those are still both on W7.

The upsides to a 6805 or 6805T are that you can get a used or refurb model off EBay for $25 or so and your SFF-8087 to 4x SAS cable is the same.

You will need to use Adaptec's Storage Manager software to configure your drives as JBOD as W10 does not let you access the card bios on startup directly like W7 did.

Sorry for the delayed response, I didn't get any indication of your reply and just found it when going through the storage forum.
 
Solution

Titanion

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OK. I got an Adaptec 6805T and have it all plugged in to the two 3TB SAS drives and the battery.

What is next? I downloaded Adaptec's Storage Manager but struggled after that.

Specific details would be great, even the correct software or drivers needed, just to make sure I have the correct one. When I open up the software, it wants to go online, and I get a not safe message.

And I know there could be some little things, loose wires, dead battery, needing to reseat the pci card, or even hardware failure with these used parts. But I am not at this stage yet.

Thanks for any help you can offer.